Pokémon TCG Pocket

[CTNC]

I'll be honest a turn 4-5 rare candy feels mostly indistinguishable from a turn 4-5 "you actually found your middle & last stages in quick succession"

Turn 5? Maybe. Turn 4, literally impossible because without Rare Candy because that's the second player's second turn.

I guess it's just from my perspective:
-opening hand has your basic but nothing else
-next turn you get rare candy, but obviously can't do anything else so your guy has to either stay active & survive or stay in the back until ready
-final turn you get your final stage and can go to town (or begin to go to town)

is not that dissimilar to this:
-opening hands has your basic but nothing else
-next turn you get your middle stage, and evolve but you still have to decide to either stay active & survive (but now you do chip damage) or stay in the back until ready
-final turn you get your final stage and can go to town

I run rare candy + gabite (I think just 1 rn) in my garchomp deck and I've ran into both scenarios enough* that it still feels similar. Obviously the bigger appeal of rare candy is the other scenarios, like a mid/late game ramp up where you get your basic going and then can evolve straight away next turn (imo I think THIS is the most consistent scenario and its existence alone makes rare candy worth running), or that coveted turn 2 rare candy gg ez next. But the one I'm specifically outlining is very close to just breaking even on luck.

Okay. We were definitely thinking of turn numbers differently. I was saying Turns 3-5 in the way the game means turns instead of the player's third to fifth turn. (First players first turn is Turn 1, second player's first Turn is Turn 2, first player's second turn is Turn 3, ect.)


Here's what I was complaining about.

Turn 1: Player 1 does nothing that matters.
Turn 2: Player 2 benches a Skull Fossil and put an Energy on their active Pokemon.
Turn 3: Player 1 fail to get a second Pokemon to play.
Turn 4: Player 2 uses a Rare Candy on the Fossil, switches to Ramparados, and 130 Damage OHKO. GG


I admit it's not extremely likely, (and it's rarer than Misty instantly winning the game) but it's for from impossible and losing before you even get to play is just painful.

 

[Bakugames]

But the one I'm specifically outlining is very close to just breaking even on luck.

this is true! but its like you said, rare candy has more value because its other scenarios are much better. to put it in a different perspective: rare candy will almost always ramp up your board one turn earlier, and it can even be faster because it can lead to pokemon communication being a more effective tool to guarantee a rare candy + stage 2 ramp

 

[ant4456]

DISCLAIMER: I STOPPED PLAYING LIKE A MONTH AGO BECAUSE I FELT THIS GAME IS JUST A GACHA DAILY AND I WASNT HAVING FUN

imo ex pokemon are a red herring for tcg pocket's issues as a game game

the problem is deckspace

20 cards is just way too little to have an interesting game

 

[Bakugames]

20 cards is just way too little to have an interesting game

Do u think it should be 60 like the main tcg, or maybe an inbetween like 40?

I don't mind the deck space that much but i do wish i had at least 10 more slots for cards lol

 

[DrrT]

DISCLAIMER: I STOPPED PLAYING LIKE A MONTH AGO BECAUSE I FELT THIS GAME IS JUST A GACHA DAILY AND I WASNT HAVING FUN

imo ex pokemon are a red herring for tcg pocket's issues as a game game

the problem is deckspace

20 cards is just way too little to have an interesting game

?

The game is a gacha. They have never tried to hide that. The entire nature of even the physical TCG is literally gambling. Like don't get me wrong it's totally understandable but I have no idea why you were expecting otherwise.

That being said, I also disagree on the later aspect because this has been the most varied meta since...probably the entire lifespan of the game, even trough as pointed out by others Rare Candy is kind of a mistake. There is plenty of different strategies even with decks this size, I guess it depends on what you consider "interesting" but I'm seeing more counterplay here than in TCGs with way bigger decks.

 

[Bakugames]

I dont see rare candy as a mistake, it IS the reason why the meta is so varied. Chomp ex, shiny zard ex and solgaleo ex are only viable because of it, and otherwise darkrai ex would completely outclass most of them, which would make meowscarada the best anti meta pick that also invalidates all these decks (and even non ex decks like rampardos) pretty easily. hell, darkrai ex is still really good despite all those updates, let alone if the stage 2 decks didnt have a rare candy tech tool

 

[R_N]

20 cards seems fine for this kind of thing, honestly.

once more draw stuff gets added things will probably get spicy though.

 

[ant4456]

?

The game is a gacha. They have never tried to hide that. The entire nature of even the physical TCG is literally gambling. Like don't get me wrong it's totally understandable but I have no idea why you were expecting otherwise.

That being said, I also disagree on the later aspect because this has been the most varied meta since...probably the entire lifespan of the game, even trough as pointed out by others Rare Candy is kind of a mistake. There is plenty of different strategies even with decks this size, I guess it depends on what you consider "interesting" but I'm seeing more counterplay here than in TCGs with way bigger decks.

yeah gachas suck

they got me until they kept releasing entire sets like every month which made it feel basically impossible to keep up and i dont care if its "naive" to have thought maybe they'd keep the game fun lol

 

[ant4456]

tcg pocket is the kind of boring gacha game design that can take the fun idea of waking up to a fun surprise and turn it into a dull encounter where you're just speedrunning doing your chore in bed

instead of having fun im opening app, spam click, open the pack, spam skip for 20 sec, back animation, go to wonder pick, do low cost if nothing i want for the quest, otherwise go, take like 40 sec anyways, get jack shit, go back, then click on the quest to finish and get my reward

takes 5 mins and even if i get something "cool" what is the reward. what i get a card that is stuck in this game that will go offline in 10 years? a card that will be meta irrelevant in 3 months? something i'll see and get a hit now and then feel nothing 30 minutes later after i told my friends, and now it's meaningless

we used to have real mobile game. subway surfers clears unironically

and what did i get for grinding the game daily for months? an update that made wonder pick take longer and they basically gave up the pretense of the idea of keeping up f2p as a collector lol

"well its a gacha what did you expect"

refer to the following screenshot:

 

[Count Bleck]

tcg pocket is the kind of boring gacha game design that can take the fun idea of waking up to a fun surprise and turn it into a dull encounter where you're just speedrunning doing your chore in bed

instead of having fun im opening app, spam click, open the pack, spam skip for 20 sec, back animation, go to wonder pick, do low cost if nothing i want for the quest, otherwise go, take like 40 sec anyways, get jack shit, go back, then click on the quest to finish and get my reward

takes 5 mins and even if i get something "cool" what is the reward. what i get a card that is stuck in this game that will go offline in 10 years? a card that will be meta irrelevant in 3 months? something i'll see and get a hit now and then feel nothing 30 minutes later after i told my friends, and now it's meaningless

we used to have real mobile game. subway surfers clears unironically

and what did i get for grinding the game daily for months? an update that made wonder pick take longer and they basically gave up the pretense of the idea of keeping up f2p as a collector lol

"well its a gacha what did you expect"

refer to the following screenshot:
View attachment 739996

This has nothing to do with gacha and everything to deal with beong a tcg. I dont know what you were expecting from a simplified mobile tcg. Like be honest, im curious how many tcgs you have played previously, and how many were the mobile versions. What are you missing from this outside feeling like releases are too frequent to amass a collection?

 

[ant4456]

This has nothing to do with gacha and everything to deal with beong a tcg. I dont know what you were expecting from a simplified mobile tcg. Like be honest, im curious how many tcgs you have played previously, and how many were the mobile versions. What are you missing from this outside feeling like releases are too frequent to amass a collection?

the gameplay is bad idk what else you want me to tell you

instead of doing a "what were you expecting nerd emoji" literally just understand that I WAS EXPECTING IT TO BE FUN AND IT WASNT FUN

 

[Mad Ram]

When all your issues are intrinsically connected to the game's genre, you do deserve the "what were you expecting" comments. What you said applies to literally every digital trading card game on the market. All of them have power creep where newer sets will have cards that make older cards unviable. All of them only really get you things that stay in the game and can go away if the game's discontinued. All of them depend on opening more packs. Whether it be TCG pocket, Duel Links, or even just the standard online clients for the big three tcgs, it's all the same because it's part of the genre. It's like wanting to play a new multiplayer shooter and then complaining because you keep getting shot. It's not even as if you said this game does it worse than the others. It's that it has those traits in the first place. If anything it makes you look like this:

 

[Count Bleck]

Here comes the Ultra Beasts! New mini set, Interdimensional Crisis, comes out May 29th!

 

[R_N]

With that set on the horizon I may as well ask here: Does anyone have a Beedrill EX or (Shining Revelry) Pikachu EX to trade? I have the pack points for one but I still need the other.

 

[CTNC]

I already despise this set.

Good News: Misty is finally competitively unviable. It's a miracle! :D

Worse News: Team Rocket Grunts is still a thing. With all due respect to anyone using that card, I hate you. A lot. I wish upon you more tails than there are in the largest furry conventions.

Misty is now my THIRD most hated card in the game and it's a DISTANT third place. Team Rocket Grunts already pissed me off, but a REPEATABLE Team Rocket Grunts?! Fuck you game devs and fuck whoever uses this! It better be competitively unviable!

 

[Bakugames]

lol these cards are funny to me because theyre obviously made to try to counter darktina, which needs 7 energy in total to function proper. i play rampardos so these energy removals r useless vs my deck

 

[DrrT]

Very late reply but let me share some ramblings:
- I'm still saving hourglasses for Zekrom's debut, or a Paldea/Hoenn/Johto set if I'm feeling nostalgic, so I expect nothing from most of my pulls, but fucking damn it next subset already announced, got all full art Tapus but somehow not a single Solgaleo? come on
- Ultra Necrozma as a promo is crazy. I like it despite being such a gimmick because it using both M and P energies is a fun callback, but how is literally the most hype Ultra Beast ever not the headliner but a promo? Are they that confident a Dragon ex would never sell?
- I was initially disappointed Ultra Beasts didn't keep their physical TCG gimmick until I remembered Pocket only has three prize points so it was jusy imposible to do and they kinda of call back to that with Lusamine so good job I guess. Thay does bring me to my later point tho...
- I'm still worried about the pacing in terms of hype. The sets being in seemingly random orders is fine and understandable but I keep getting more and more worried about the anniversary. The game is not even 1 year old and we already have Regional Forms, shinies and now Ultra Beasts. There is nothing really big to debut on the anniversary other than Megas which would be an absolute disaster in every way. I don't understand how they are seemingly saving up Johto so the nostalgic fans don't just flee after gens 1 and 2 are done but they has no issues at all releasing Alolan forms, or why they saved Arceus' gimmick for some weird reason but we are now still getting Ultra Beast. I know, it's just a tag/archetype not a big deal on itself, but what worries me is what plans they may have ahead. They already released shiny Charizard for crying out loud! It just doesn't feel like they are spacing things enough for the average player, at least in my eyes.
- speaking of shinies I still think them being in every pack is such a mistake. I only do free pulls and I already have repeated shinies. What a way to miss the entire point of what made them special in the physical TCG.
- lmao at Guzzlord. Just lmao

I guess I should say something nice too...uh the music genres attacks on the Ultra Beasts are cool! And we are getting all of them!

yeah gachas suck

they got me until they kept releasing entire sets like every month which made it feel basically impossible to keep up and i dont care if its "naive" to have thought maybe they'd keep the game fun lol

I'm not saying it was naive to expect the game to have fun. I'm saying it doesn't make any sense to say "this gacha was feeling like a gacha", that's not even naive that's just like...playing a shooter and complaining you had to shoot. Gachas are not supposed to allow f2p players to keep up, because that ruins their business model. They are predatory in nature. And Pokemon is not strange to those things, just ask the arcade machines in Japan where you literally need to "pull" every single capture.

I just can't understand how you started playing a game that is Pokemon + a TCG + a gacha and somehow thought you would be able to keep up without it feeling like the random luck game it is. Like the fact it even has trading is a miracle by gacha standards.

 

[R_N]

- I'm still worried about the pacing in terms of hype. The sets being in seemingly random orders is fine and understandable but I keep getting more and more worried about the anniversary. The game is not even 1 year old and we already have Regional Forms, shinies and now Ultra Beasts. There is nothing really big to debut on the anniversary other than Megas which would be an absolute disaster in every way. I don't understand how they are seemingly saving up Johto so the nostalgic fans don't just flee after gens 1 and 2 are done but they has no issues at all releasing Alolan forms, or why they saved Arceus' gimmick for some weird reason but we are now still getting Ultra Beast. I know, it's just a tag/archetype not a big deal on itself, but what worries me is what plans they may have ahead. They already released shiny Charizard for crying out loud! It just doesn't feel like they are spacing things enough for the average player, at least in my eyes.

I guess the easy answer is they don't really do anything special for hype. The half-anniversary was an alola set and a rayquaza promo; the actual prizes was all the hourglasses and stuff. Anniversary will probably be similar; just some region-focused set (or, if we've gone through all the regions by then, a more regular TCG-styled potpourri set) with the real thrust being a promo of a popular Pokemon and a bunch of resources to do pulls.

(& probably have a shiny set every year for Pokemon Day)

I'm curious if they're ever going to routinely double dip on some of these passive gimmicks moving forward. Like release more Arceus-enabled cards, more UB "support" and whatever else moving forward (I bet they bring in the Strikes when we get to Galar, Ancient/Future with the Paradoxes but I assume some original stuff too eventually). In the real TCG there's usually "blocks" where those are relevant, but thus far it's just been single sets...but also single sets released really early on. Would be easy to release a couple more in the future if they wanted to.